Sorry, that’s too Wild at Heart

In the Spring of 2003, suddenly the most calamitous winter descended, straight from the bowels of latter Proverbs chapter 1 (vv. 20-33). Shocked by an unprecedented anticipation, numb to the extent of the ferocity of my feelings, in despair to an awakening I couldn’t ignore, in being castigated, I was brought to the precipice of hope.

My hope was twofold: first, I’d found God. The Lord was my hope. Yet, secondly, I also hoped to put my broken marriage together again. This second hope was a noble hope, yet, like we all do, I often made it an idol. You see, my grief made it such a pressing priority to fix what was interminably broken. I couldn’t adjust to my loss. And whilst I did everything I could to turn my life around—and I did—there were facets of my situation that I didn’t have control over.

As I reflect today, this is the wisdom I have discerned:

Recovering from loss is as much about what we do
about the things we cannot control
as it is about the things we do change
regarding the things in our control.

One of these, though it is hard, is easier than the other.

For me, I could do the latter—I changed the things I could. But I bargained on a hope that I might be able to change something I could not change. This article is about how Christian teaching can mislead. I like to think I always behaved appropriately, but I also need to accept that I probably occasionally didn’t.

This is an article about men and how they treat women. We need to be aware how we treat each other. But in terms of men, we—society I mean—believe in the sociological development of men. We’re growing in our belief in the sociological development of women. If you struggle with the feminist, just imagine the world they see! All of us with God ought to be on the same side! But we clearly are not. We too easily place a doctrine, a philosophy, a theology ahead of humility and make idols of the mysteries of God, losing our love for our fellow brothers and sisters, which is the entire game.

~

I believe in men. Don’t worry, I know the value of initiation for boys in bringing them along the way to manhood. I am a convert of books like Iron John (1990) by sociologist, Robert Bly. That book alone was pivotal for me even as a mid-40s man. It explained so many things that I needed to be aware of for myself and for my work with other men. But it was my failed marriage that taught me most about women.

This is the point where I need to make a confession. At a crucial time in my life, when I was trying to put my first marriage back together again, I found Wild at Heart (2001) by John Eldredge. It was a new book back then. As it was for many men, it quickly became my seminal text. It was my blueprint for my number one objective: a beauty to rescue. I made it my prime purpose to do everything I could to be the man I thought my beauty needed.

The trouble was,
and this book does not consider this question,
did my beauty want to be rescued?

I say to my guilt and to my shame, that it wasn’t until recently that I asked this question. “Do women even want to be rescued?” And, if so, “under what circumstances?” The book presumes, from a complementarian theology, that women have one way of thinking and one psychology—which is and has to be a dumbing down of reality.

Surely it makes men feel good, and purposeful, and champions no less, when they have a conquest to conquer. Doesn’t it seem a little outrageous that we don’t presume women might not have the very same desires. The complementarian theology pigeonholes women and men in categories; men are forced to be leaders and must ‘man up’. Women are to be led, and, at the worst extremes of this ideology, to be submissive.

Wild at Heart encouraged me to pursue my beauty to rescue (my ex-wife who was done with the marriage) without even as much as a query as to whether it was the appropriate thing to do or not (whether she wanted me to do that or not). It set the narrative in the fantasy world, which would be okay if it weren’t so compelling. Perhaps the most dangerous issue was that I, and other men who have read this book, could easily imagine that our behaviour of pursuit—especially when it isn’t or wasn’t called for, and certainly when it isn’t or wasn’t appreciated—is or was justified as appropriate, even godly. And it wasn’t just my ex-wife, a pursuit (or a hope I kept alive) that lasted nine months. I became infatuated with another woman and held an unrealistic hope for her too, never really understanding how it must’ve felt for her. As I say, it is to my shame that I realise the folly of these behaviours. I could hide behind the way I was led, and I can hide behind Wild at Heart if I wish, but the truth is hiding won’t achieve anything for me or anyone else.

Let’s just be honest for a moment.

If even one woman is pursued
when she doesn’t want to be pursued,
why do we romanticise the concept of pursuit?

Such an unwanted pursuit is sin… it is abuse.

It’s a deplorable situation! As men we have to really ask why is it that books like Wild at Heart appeal to our hearts so much. It’s because they make us feel good, because they make us feel brave, and because it speaks to humanity’s heart in us that wants to overcome for a good and holy purpose.

It must enrage many women, that within the role of privilege, where the genders are definitely unequal, that men get to feel virtuous in potentially doing violence. You might think that’s a bit strong but think of any action that anyone does to us without our consent.

Where anyone insists they do something for us,
where we don’t have the capacity to say,
“No thank you very much,”
it is violence.

My ex-wife may have appreciated me fighting for her and for our marriage, but a humbling fact is I never asked. She may have appreciated some of the things I was doing. But I know in my own heart some of the things I did were not helpful. I know marriage reconciliation can be a messy business; it almost always is. But can you see how easily we may be motivated and led to do something for a holy purpose in a completely unholy way? It doesn’t take too much to imagine the beauty we seek to rescue feeling stalked. What a reprehensible result. One of the best things I have ever done in terms of the relationship with my ex-wife was simply to commit to friendship with her; to retain a portion of love in my heart for her as a person, as the cherished mother of my children, as the daughter of God she is. And we have remained friends all these years. I have even been employed by her.

I’m not against men. I am for men. I am a man and I know how hard it is to be a man. But we must also presume similar challenges exist for women. We certainly need to be able to empathise, between the genders, with one another more.

We need to get out of fantasy land and into the land of reality. As men, we need to be doubly and triply sure that our actions of ‘pursuit’ are wanted, because if there is even the slightest chance our actions are unwelcome we cause violence, and in this we betray not just a sister, but God as well.